For those of you who feel they may be aging themselves by reminiscing with us ..

The Lawrence Welk Show started in July,1955, the last show was in April, 1982

This past weekend we drove up from Sunset Beach, NC to Virginia Beach, VA to visit family. Mostly it's to visit my Mom, who will turn 87 on Dec. 20 but we have other family there also. Since my dad passed last year at the ripe old age of 91, she has been living with my older sister and her husband.

God bless them, my mom can be difficult at times. She is having a hard time dealing with her physical limitations and loss of independence, as anyone would, but knows she is surrounded by loving family.

Part of that loving family is my sister's son and wife and 5 year old daughter that live across the street. Gretchen, our 5 year old great niece is, officially, the reigning princess of the family.

I say officially because our daughter "Princess" Tamzen, who had enjoyed an uninterrupted reign of 28 years as the only female grandchild or great grandchild on the Baker side of the family, has passed the tiara onto Gretchen.

It was time, Gretchen & Tami bonded immediately, kindred souls, natural born performers, two peas in a pod, it was a natural transition.

You may think this is the generation gap mentioned in the title but it is not. The biggest gap in our family is between my mom, soon to be 87 and my great niece Gretchen, recently turned 5 and I was totally amazed by something that happened the other day during our visit.

Karen was happily playing with Gretchen. They had fashioned a train from a cardboard box and were pulling our two pooches, Bonita & Bella, around the house announcing their imaginary destinations and arrivals.

Suddenly I heard this very familiar music I hadn't heard in decades. It was the Champagne music theme of "The Lawrence Welk Show". For all you 50+ers I'm sure you were subjected to your parents watching this show every week. After all, most of us only had one TV and no video games.TV time was a family event. My sister has found reruns of the show on one of the myriad cable channels available to us all and diligently records them for my mom to watch at her leisure (all the time).

Upon hearing this music Gretchen immediately stopped what she was doing and ran to the TV. She is totally mesmerized by this show. She sat perfectly still next to her nana-the-great and watched the whole show. Although there were times when she would jump up and exclaim, "There's Bobby", and start dancing all over the great room. Yup, she even knows the names of all the Regulars on the show. I was mesmerized by the hairstyles and outfits the singers and dancers were wearing.

My sister told me she watches it all the time, so take that, Sesame Street or whatever the hottest kids shows are nowadays. What's next? Perhaps "The Ed Sullivan Show".

For those of you who feel they may be aging themselves by reminiscing with us ..

The Lawrence Welk Show started in July, 1955 and the last show was in April, 1982 ...